For CL Day 4, my group and I visited Byond, which is a travel company that uses virtual reality in their work. First in our schedule was a brief introduction about virtual reality headsets and 360 degree video cameras, which was commendable and interesting. It was amazing. We learnt about the two types of VR sets and that the camera is made up of two 180 degree cameras. We learned that VR can be used in the healthcare field. By this I mean that doctors can simulate operations and surgeries. Virtual reality can also help in education. These technologies can enable students to virtually visit locations that they aren’t able to physically visit. These locations can range from the Amazon rainforest to the surface of The Moon.We were then shown demo videos on the headsets. The video was of the Cirque du Soleil. Most of us thought it was creepy and macabre, while the rest thought it was boring, although everyone agreed that it was strange. The headsets and cameras were passed onto each of us to inspect.

The hosts then taught us how to use the cameras and instructed us to make our own videos using it. We were then divided into two groups. In our groups, we were given time to discuss and plan our plot for our videos as the teacher had specifically told us that it had to be a story. The first few stories we came up with were horrible but hilarious. For example we came up with a story of one of us choking on our food. This idea was spitballed into the brainstorm mainly because it was our lunch break. We then agreed to do a murder mystery. The plot of our story was, two people get murdered and the police try and solve the mystery. It was extremely hard to shoot this as we kept laughing during each clip. This became a waste of time as we had to take each scene at least 7 times.

Finally we had finished. One of the hosts showed us samples of our clips. The result of our video wasn’t as good as I expected because the quality of the video and the sound were terrible. Overall the trip was likable and something to learn from. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Today was a day filled with lots of joy and learning. We started off the day by going to our CL rooms where we were assigned our groups and then eventually created our essential questions. Some key words that we could use in our essential questions were refugee, consulate general, Myanmar and Rohingya. The essential questions, along with the day, were based around refugees entering Canada.​

After we created our questions, we made our way to the buses, from there we would be heading to the World Trade Center in Bangalore. During the bus ride we came up with interview questions that had tied in with refugees coming from other countries to Canada. As we entered the building, it all felt very calm and thrilling. The place was huge and inside there were around 12 elevators. Once we entered the elevators we had arrived at out floor at quite a fast pace. We were welcomed in and were given places to sit down. Once we sat down, Ms. Jennifer Daubeny, the Consul-General, and Ms. Shafryne Sayani, the Migration Officer, entered and gave us an introduction about the relationship between India and Canada, along with an explanation about the process in which refugees enter Canada. They showed us a list about some of the most famous companies which are there because of the friendship between India and Canada. For example, I saw Mc Cain as one of the companies that originated in Canada but which also operates in India.

After that, we conducted our interviews. Luckily we had a microphone which helped us a lot with our audio. Unfortunately we did have to start to go to the bus around 12:00. On the bus we ate lunch and talked about what we learned on the trip. When we reached back we made our news report based on the entire refugee interview. To do this we, used a green screen with which we could choose the background we wanted. The app that we used was called Touch Cast, as this app would pick up the green color from the frame and block it out. From there we changed the background to look like a real news headquarters! Once the app was set up we had to assign roles. I had volunteered to be the news anchor. This means that I would have to be the person to give the introduction along with transitions in the video.

I think that the hardest part of today would be saying the news with the green screen. I think that the names of the people was a bit challenging to pronounce, but I managed to say it in front of the camera. I think that it is cool how you can go anywhere in the world by just going in front of something green!

Overall I thought that I learned a lot on this trip and I think that it is very interesting the ways that Canada can take refugees and decline refugees.

Today, we went to a professional recording studio. We went there with Ms. Lakshmi and met Mr. Boniface over there because it was his studio. We learnt about all the things we’d need to know which included not touching anything and respecting the area. In two groups, he took us into his recording studio, which was soundproof. We learnt about how they made a regular bedroom a soundproof recording studio. It was 10 inches thick, and was extremely pretty. Here are some other things we learned: - Respecting work space & equipment- The purpose of soundproofing & the materials commonly used- The difference between Studio Monitors & Regular Home Speakers- The purpose of a high quality external sound card- Professional recording softwares (Logic pro X 10:2:2)- Measurement of sound & frequency- VSTs (Virtual Studio Technology)- Creating drum patterns or loops on a recording software- Got acquainted to the elements of song writing- Worked on creating/composing a song

Mr. Boniface has a liking for bikes and skulls, as they decorated just about everything in that specific room. He asked us to choose style, tempo, and the title for a song. After that, we were given 20 minutes to write lyrics to that.

The title of our song was “Hiccups in the Studio” or “H.I.T.S” for short. After that Mr. Boniface set up mikes in the studio, while we were rehearsing our lyrics. When we came out, he told us that there was something wrong and we wouldn’t be able to use the mikes. We read the lyrics out to him, but he didn’t exactly choose one for us to use. We had too little time, so we couldn’t record. And the mike software was broken. So most of us came back to the studio on Saturday to record our original song. I think the day went relatively well, except that I was the only 7th grade girl. I learnt that being the only girl in your grade for projects isn’t really fun. I got bored a lot and felt left out because I was the only girl in my grade.

By Dannica​Grade 7

"Hiccups in the Studio"

The day started with Ms Maria from Reapbenefit asking us about the problems and good things about Bangalore. It took us about 6 minuets to list enough things. The bad things overwhelmed the good things. The good things had things like malls and roads, but malls and roads make bad things like pollution, traffic, trash etc. Later she said we were here to fix the trash part by coding and building smart bins. Akash was the only one familiar with this because he was part of something like this in another CL day.

We then got in pairs (or trios) and grouped up. Each group received a box with cool chips and boards of tech. It looked very complicated, because it was! The only thing I knew what to do is to plug the usb cable into the Arduino board. It had so many things but packed into one tiny board, it overwhelmed me. Ms. Maria didn’t want to call us by This group, that group, their group, and the other group. So we had group names and everything was simplified and totally easy. The groups were This group, that group, their group and S.A.S. SAS stood for Sooahn, Alli Sanaa. We took our Arduino board to the computer and plugged it in.

The instructors told us the basics of the code, like to verify your code and to upload your code. And then to the even more basic stuff, it was so hard and I couldn’t understand what to do. I asked Akash for help and he helped me. He tried his best to explain to me, but it was so hard. I could see the struggle on his face. After that we went to something harder, at this point I was scared. But it turned out it was easy. We learned to make the lights blink in different colors. And we also learned to show our names in Morse code. The bell rang and we went to snack.

When I saw my friends who weren’t in our group, I had a feeling that I haven’t seen them in weeks, but they felt normal so the coding probably got to my head. We went back to the class and everyone was their, except Alli and Sooahn. They came like 7 minuets later because Sooahn felt sick. She then went home early. Team SAS turned into team SA... or AS.

Now we were learning about the cords. And it happened again... Team AS turned into team S, well that’s because Alli joined our group because Sanaa was to good at this and she was not on our level. We later learned that when you take out a cord from a group of them, it’s really satisfying, but we also learned how to connect things. There were 3 main things to connecting: Ground, VCC and volt 5. We connected the Arduino board to a small chip. That’s when I realized there were now two main groups. The advanced group and the basic one. I was in the basic one. We were gonna use moist sense, a sensor that senses water and depending on how much there is will change the color of an led light. The bell rang for lunch.​I had the feeling that I haven’t seen them in a while again, it was probably because they were wearing jackets. A sign that life is trying to deceive me. When we went back to the lab, we went to the composting bins, we all remember those, their smell, their aura, it was like dung mixed with yogurt and some classic H2 with some of that O, also known as 2 Hydrogen atoms and and an Oxygen atom fused together to make H2 of the O. But surprise surprise! It wasn’t smelly, well not that smelly. We talked about how we were gonna use our creation for these. We talked about it for a bit and went back to the class. We opened the moist sensor, connected it and we were done, almost. Now it was time to put it all in a box. And it was over, yay! Now we just needed to see if it worked... ... ... And it didn’t work. Wow, let’s just take out some wires... ... ... Yes it works. I am so proud.

The people who were in the advanced group come in and their project was so good. Their was a sensor called a distance sensor which sends someone a Mail when something is close to it. Why is that useful? When the bin is full, someone will get an email saying the bin is full and someone will empty the bin. I was overwhelmed. It felt like I ran a marathon and got first place, only to figure out I was the only one to participate in the marathon. My brain claps slowly, packs its suit case and abandons me. Now everyone went home. Now if you see in the atrium there will be a CCD bin with a distance sensor.

On 17 January the members of the Drone Group learned how to fly drones and the uses of Drones in real life situations.

Firstly Mr.Nicolas taught us the real life uses of drones. Some of the uses were rescuing humans and using drones in warfare, but the most important reason was REPLACING HUMANS, so there would be less human casualties. Then Mr.Nicolas taught us how to fly drones, not with joysticks but code. An important lesson he taught us was: Drones do not make mistakes, but you do. So, if we did not give the right code, it would not work, even thought if you shout at your drone.

We learned about the basic blocks, like flips, taking off, landing, moving forward, turning left and right. Then Sir started flying the drones and it was not working, we were scared and confused, but mostly scared. We realised there was a malfunction with the Drone, and when we changed it, it worked. When we saw the drone flipping we were amazed.

​After that we got to experiment with the drones ourselves. When we flew the drones, we were experts. I am not trying to brag. The problem we faced was the drones not pairing and malfunctioning.

We got a little project about flying the drones through obstacles. Even though we were experts, it was impossible! We were frustrated on how sometimes the drones would not pair. We could not do it, so we had to rearrange the course to make it a little easier. Then after maybe 101 tries someone finally did it, but sadly I could not get the video of us finally doing it. We really enjoyed the project, although we were frustrated

After our well-deserved break, we went to teach grade one about drones. I heard some people in the class saying ahhh, it is going to be soooooo boring. When we reached, we had absolutely no idea what to do, so we got prompted by our teachers on what to do. First we asked grade one if they knew anything about drones or their real life use. No response. Once their teacher encouraged them to answer, they gave us really good responses. But when we asked about their real life uses, they gave the same answers as us. Neither the grade one nor we did give the true answer which was REPLACING HUMANS.

Next we showed them some tricks with the drones and they were AMAZED! So then we taught the grade one’s how to fly the drones and how to use the code. After that we let the grade one’s fly the drones and they were good at it. We gave them a challenge, to fly the drone to help people, NOT IN REAL LIFE, but with the toys they had. They found it hard, but at the end, they did it, and they even were showing off.

Drone Commercial by Vithal and Ananth

After a really long day, we were exhausted, but we still had one last challenge which was exciting. It was to make a commercial for the real life uses of drones. As I am a sponsor I suggest you buy OUR drones. We had about one hour to make our commercial, but our group maybe took double the time. We faced a lot of challenges while making the commercial like, not having any background sounds in our recordings, and we struggled to make the drone land in a tire.

​As the end of the longest day of the school year was coming to an end, we had some time for reflecting. We had two reflecting tasks: making a reflection on Explain Everything and in our journals. At the end we had a lot of fun.

There were three different parts to our work today; we learned to code Spheros, we took creative photos of the moving Spheros, and we used Spheros to make a painting.

We first learned about coding, then we programmed our Spheros to go through an obstacle course. We had to catch it on video if we succeeded. Then we used a slow motion app and took a picture of a light trail of the moving Spheros. Then we put all the Spheros together and rolled them around while a light trail camera was taking a long shutter picture. It looked like a messy rainbow. We then tried Spheros with paint and rolled them around and tried to get pieces of paper to look like art.

After lunch we went to the room where they did the break in and we were given a story and clues around a class and had to unlock three locks to get inside the box before an evil doctor ate our brains. We finished it with two minutes to the end and their was candy inside! Then we journaled and put the art work in our journals.

I liked how we got to paint with the Spheros and it was very fun but sometimes it rolled off the big paper and got on the floor and the teacher was not very happy. Then I really was frustrated when the shperos didn’t want to connect, but when they did work, it was fun. I also learned I don’t really likecoding as it’s really hard for me. But the whole day was fun and some parts were more fun than others and some were more frustrating than others.

More about our work ​by Gaeun, Jeehye and Hanari

PURPOSE OF THE DAY:Students are given different videos that have no sound. They will learn to use GarageBand on their iPads to create a piece of music appropriate for the video at hand.CL day was a lot of fun. The day started out normally, we went to the band room and waited until Mr. Scott started. He taught us how to make music and putit onto a trailer using iMovie and Garageband. All trailers were from either Marvel or The Guardians of the Galaxy. He gave us about three hours to do that with a small recess break in between.

​When all of us got back, we all saw each other's trailers and it turned out to be really good. Mr. Scott then spoke to us about our projects for a little while, gave us feedback, and then told us to make an Explain Everything on how our day was and what we did, so we took about an hour for that.

From there we went to the sixth graders who were doing the break out in sixty minutes. Miss Melanie told us what was supposed to be done and then sent us in to the room. At first all of us were struggling but later we found a couple of clues. During the break out we found a pen with a black light. The black light was found quite often, all of us found so many pieces of paper with tree written on it, it turned out to be that it ( tree ) was one of the passwords to a lock. Then we found a secret dictionary with a lock on it. Once we figured the code for that we found another pen with a black light on it. We opened two of the locks and a secret dictionary but it was pretty hard opening the third lock. A while later one of the group members found a clue but none of us listened to her. If we had listened to her, the seventh graders could have finished the break out faster.

At the end all of us got the last lock opened and everyone ran and fought for what was inside it, obviously there was chocolate in it. Now the class had been asked to go back to Mr. Scott's room and write in our journals. There was no essential question given to us so Mr. Scott gave us one. And that was what our CL day was like.

Today was a really fun day. Breaking out was a really intense activity as it was fun and frustrating at the same time. The most important thing today was to work in a team as the time ran out we got more frustrated and we shouldn't have.

In the first quarter we got to break “in” the boxthat Ms. Melanie and Ms. Coleen made. We all spread out and looked for clues that might help us to unlock the locks. Some of the rules were:1. to put the clues back in their spots after sharing them with the team2. to share the clues with the entire team3. to ask for help from the teachers only if the entire team agrees to ask for help

In the second quarter we made a break out box ourselves. We had to put clues around the room and find tough combinations for the locks. Then the two breakout groups went into each other’s rooms and tried to break in the box and escape to SAVE THE WORLD. It was hard!

Later on, we prepared for other groups to come into our rooms and try to break in the boxes. In one group they opened 1 lock using a pin instead of the key we hid.

Today was a fabulous day and it required a lot of team work. We started the day in homeroom and then went to the bus. The bus ride was real fun as we played music and enjoyed the company of our friends. When we reached the makers space called Workbench Projects, we were divided into 4 groups: laser cutting, carpentry, robotics, and 3D design. A guide greeted us and gave us a tour of the place. We explored each machine briefly. My personal favourite was the laser cutting machine. I liked this machine because it could cut numerous designs on multiple forms of material with just a laser.

After we finished the tour, we were assorted into our 4 groups and they explained the project we were going to do. The main purpose of the day was to complete a smart bird house, where the alarm would go off when the feeder ran out of water. All groups had to communicate at one point. We of course faced multiple ups and downs, but then that was the point right? We make mistakes to learn from them. I was in the group of 3D printing. We came up with our first design which was a cylindrical bowl for the birds. But then when we shared our ideas with the electronics group, we discovered our idea couldn’t work with their designs, so we then deleted all of our designs and started building rectangular prism styled bowls. We were taught by an expert who works at the makers space. I think our guide was great and he helped when we needed him and let us explore it on our own too.

When we finished our design, we printed one bowl and it came out to be wonderful. My group was very proud. After completing this, we went and had lunch at their outdoor tables. The day was pretty much concluded from this point because my group had finished our task. We then explored what other groups were doing.

I think collaboration played a major part in our day. As, if we didn’t communicate with the other groups, we would have not produced a wonderful outcome. Our day ended with a wonderful group picture. I would like to thank our teacher who made this possible and allowed us to gain this much knowledge that we couldn’t have in our classrooms.